'Riverdale': Ironically best of the Blossom crew, how did Thornhill mold Cheryl into a red-hooded archer?

This article contains spoilers for Riverdale Season 1 to 4

'Riverdale' has taken its storyline so far away from the comics happy-go-lucky nature that each character's profile has intense unmasking — pun intended — to do, and we're all here for that. The product of the dark-themed grounds of Thornhill comes Cheryl Marjorie Blossom — a triplet — that deals with a mother keen on taking revenge on a town that sold her as a young child to the clutches of the Blossom family.

Cheryl's gothic brave nature has been tested too many times resulting either in ultimate wins or brainwashing from young spirit lords but that stems from more than just the love of red lipstick and leading the top of the pyramid. From a town that unearths dead bodies and masked hoods and horns claiming lives, Cheryl comes from an abusive home revered in gaslighting 101 and a victim of meaningless murders. A confident drama queen running the halls of Riverdale High meet all tests of loyalty at every turn, but her battle against her mother reveals a much more subdued nature that is the dark blossom. Unknowingly, the only Blossom with a soul she compensates for her forced submissive nature at home with careful archery and the demand for utmost respect from her Vixen squad.

Befriending the four of Riverdales finest — Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica — results in a lot of frenemy vibes but the friendships blossom nonetheless. The show starts off with her losing her twin Jason at the hands of her own father Clifford Blossom. With a drug runner and a murderer for a father and having to deal with the loss of her only protector in a foe-filled family, Cheryl Blossom grew darker by the day developing her character to fit into the narratives of the town's darkest truths.

Secrets run around Riverdale like an unforgiving rat infestation and Cheryl was definitely a victim to the unearthing of the Blossom secrets leading her to punish her mother and burn Thornhill into ashes after the suicide of her guilt-ridden father. Out emerged a child that no longer is controlled by the Blossom name yet quite determined to give the legacy a new meaning as she donned on a mask that was uncovered much later in Season 4 of the show. The tough self-centered archer is what the eye catches while her girlfriend Toni saw the vulnerable heartbroken redhead that has yet to get over the dramatics of her twin's death and her mother's unfiltered murderous ego.

So how does this tight-skirted former serpent, now part of the Pretty Poisons, cope with an unnerving mother, a deluded grandmother and rasing Juniper and Dagwood? She talks to her dead brother of course, "I think maybe I've lost my mind, and I don't know when it happened. Was it when Jay-Jay died? Was it when I fell through the ice? Have I always been this way fractured?" cried the red-lipped beauty. Losing her soul at the edge of Sweetwater River, she found console in the taxidermied body of Jason, indulging in the basics of a sibling relationship — one that she lost too quickly in murky circumstances. Entitled but never accountable for actions, she's committed under the trance of her rebellion. Cheryl has curbed major alliances that want to help her fight her demons — her living mother who is out to get her and a dead brother who always protected her.

A coming-of-age character who has too much to carry on tender shoulders, Cheryl seems to have navigated to her senior year like a deer in headlights, showing no inclination of repressed vulnerability to the outside world. It makes sense that she eventually broke her silence deeming her madness has taken her to extremes that shocks even her red heart, but she had no idea when she lost it or how to get it back. A trip in the mind of a teenage girl running through a drug-induced town, with friendships that have an agenda and a mother jealous of her closeness with her brother, Cheryl finds her way back to a sustainable reality with her girlfriend living with her in Thistle house and her condemned mother rotting in a bunker.